Jay Lake: Writer

[personal|family] The mystery of my grandfather Lake and the cracked safe

My grandfather Lake was, to put it mildly, quite the character. Though he fell quite ill when I was in grade school, and passed when I was in junior high, I have vivid if necessarily limited memories of him. He features prominently in my short fiction, perhaps most of all in “A Conspiracy of Dentists“, which is based on a true story about a box full of several hundred human teeth he’d kept for many years. (More about him here if you’re curious.)

Dad recently sent me some newspaper clippings from the Galveston Daily News, June, 1950. They’re about a theft from a store Granddaddy owned. Or maybe not. He comes across as a sort of low-rent noir character in these. Which wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate.

I give you the mystery of my grandfather Lake and the cracked safe. Unfortunately, the resolution of the matter appears to be lost to history.

The building which once housed my grandfather’s grocery store in Galveston, TX, at the corner of 10th & K, where the alleged misdeeds took place. He operated this store during and after WWII.

Photo © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Family, Funny, history, media, Personal, Texas

Posted: 5:46 am Thu October 18 2012 |

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